MB-280 common mistakes
MB-280 · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Assuming any user with a marketing-related security role can publish journeys and change marketing configuration, and answering questions about 'who can do X' from a generic 'the marketer' perspective.
The out-of-box marketing roles (for example Marketing Manager, Marketing Professional, and the various marketing admin roles) split configuration and publishing privileges, and candidates who never administered an environment treat them as one role.
What to do instead
Before answering any permission question, write down the task being performed (edit content, publish, configure settings, manage segments) and map it to the specific role that grants it; memorise the publish-versus-author distinction as a pair of facts, not one.
Treating segment membership as instantly updated, and answering 'when will this contact be in the segment' with 'immediately after the record changes'.
Everyday experience with simpler list-building tools creates an assumption of live membership, but segment membership follows the segment's evaluation/refresh behaviour and can lag behind the underlying record change.
What to do instead
For any question about timing, identify the segment type first, then check when membership is evaluated; when the scenario says 'as soon as the profile changes' look for the real-time evaluation option rather than a scheduled-refresh segment.
Treating consent as a single global yes/no, so a scenario about a contact unsubscribing from one newsletter is answered as 'they can no longer be emailed anything'.
Most candidates have only seen one-dimensional unsubscribe flows and have never modelled purposes, topics, or a preference/consent centre, so the granular structure is invisible to them.
What to do instead
Model consent as purpose plus topic per contact channel, remember that consent is evaluated at send time against the message's purpose/topic, and check the scenario for whether the unsubscribe was global (all commercial email) or scoped to one topic.
Hand-typing personalization tokens or reusing a token copied from another template so it points at a field on the wrong record (for example a Lead field inside an email whose audience is Contacts), and never testing with a record where the field is blank.
The token syntax and available fields differ between the outbound and real-time email editors and depend on the audience entity chosen for the message, and tokens that fail to resolve silently render as blanks or raw text.
What to do instead
Insert tokens only via the personalization picker for the message's chosen audience entity, verify each token against the field list, and preview/test-send using a record with populated and empty values to confirm fallback text.
Leaving a finished email in draft, or declaring it 'done' after saving, without resolving validation errors and moving it to the ready-to-send state, then wondering why a journey step never sends it.
Saving feels like completion in most authoring tools, and validation errors in the marketing email editor are easy to dismiss or overlook when focus is on design.
What to do instead
Treat the email lifecycle as a checklist to recite: content complete, errors resolved, preview and test send verified, then set ready to send; if a journey step shows no sends, check message state before checking the journey.
Building an outbound marketing form and publishing the page while leaving form hosting/embedded capture and the lead-or-contact creation mapping unconfigured, then assuming submissions will appear as new records.
The form designer produces a working-looking page, and the submission-to-record pipeline is configured in a separate place that is easy never to visit.
What to do instead
For every outbound form scenario, verify three things explicitly: how the form is hosted or embedded, whether submission capture is enabled for the intended entity, and which fields map to which record attributes.
Selecting outbound marketing for a scenario that describes responding within minutes of a customer action, SMS or push delivery, or a custom event trigger.
Study habits anchor on outbound campaign mechanics, and candidates rarely internalise which capabilities exist only in the real-time engine.
What to do instead
Scan the scenario for capability keywords (immediate response to a signal, SMS/push, custom trigger, event-driven branching) and map them to real-time marketing; reserve outbound for segmentation-driven scheduled campaigns and its specific features.
Describing a journey as 'running' because it was saved, or because the trigger was created but not published, and ignoring that the audience must actually contain members before anything executes.
The builder gives a visual sense of an active flow, and the distinct save, validate, publish, and start steps blur together, as does the extra publish step for triggers and forms.
What to do instead
Recite the activation chain every time: no errors, journey published/go-live, trigger or form published, audience or segment populated, and then start; when diagnosing a silent journey, walk the chain from the trigger outward.
Configuring an event, sessions, and registration settings but leaving registration disabled or the event portal unpublished, then expecting the registration form to accept sign-ups.
Event setup spans several separate areas (event record, registration/portal configuration, sessions and check-in), and the configuration screens look complete before the portal is actually published.
What to do instead
For event questions, verify in order: registration enabled, event portal/publishing state, session and pass configuration, capacity and waiting-list behaviour, and check-in method; treat each as a fact you must confirm rather than assume.
Reading the headline analytics numbers literally, for example treating sent as delivered or interpreting an open-rate spike as genuine engagement, and choosing an answer based on the largest number on the dashboard.
Metric names look self-explanatory, and candidates do not distinguish the funnel stages or the known inflation effects on open tracking.
What to do instead
Memorise the funnel as distinct stages (sent, delivered, opened, clicked, responded) and answer questions about real interest from click or response measures; when a scenario asks which insight proves engagement, pick the metric that requires an active customer action.